


What's In A Name

by jugandbettsdetectiveagency



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Engagement, F/M, Fluff, Jughead Jones has issues with his name, discussions, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 02:22:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13354476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugandbettsdetectiveagency/pseuds/jugandbettsdetectiveagency
Summary: Jughead likes the mishmash of secondhand, thrifted, and repurposed things that make up his and Betty’s first home. He knows it sounds trite but it makes him feel like he belongs in this place that’s just a few streets higher uptown than he ever thought he’d be able to afford.Jughead feels surrounded by the thrown out, the unwanted, the abandoned - surrounded by the rescued and rehomed.





	What's In A Name

**Author's Note:**

> I like thinking about how Jughead would react to certain things, I think that's all this is.

He doesn’t want her to take it.

 

They’re sitting across from each other at their thrifted dining room table, found on a furniture recycling website because _‘_ _old is chic, Jug_ _’_. He also knows that old is affordable, old is reliable, and old is familiar.

 

There’s a lot of thrifted things around their apartment. The re-varnished side table by the couch, and the roughly painted frames hung in an off centre threesome just left of the bookshelf. The utensils holder in the kitchen is a small, tin plant pot, and he’ll even count the coasters because some hipster who lived in a shack by the beach had turned seaglass into homewear. The plates in front of them aren’t new, either; Alice Cooper had gifted them her _old good china_ after they signed their lease, like someone needed to get _new_ good china at some point during their life.

 

Jughead likes the mishmash of secondhand, thrifted, and repurposed things that make up his and Betty’s first home. He knows it sounds trite but it makes him feel like he belongs in this place that’s just a few streets higher uptown than he ever thought he’d be able to afford. This street, that has an overpriced deli-cum-coffee shop on the corner, and is a convenient ten minute walk from the nearest fitness centre. Jughead feels surrounded by the thrown out, the unwanted, the abandoned - surrounded by the rescued and rehomed.

 

Because, if he’s being slightly too cynical about it all, that’s what he was. The boy that wasn’t good enough to stop his mom from leaving, to stop his dad from having just one too many drinks to be able to untie his own shoelaces by the end of the night. Alright, so he’d thrown himself out of his home, removed himself from the place that could offer him shelter from the elements if nothing more, and taken the initiative to add ‘physically abandoned’ to the emotionally that he’d already felt at fifteen years old.

 

But he isn’t that boy anymore - he isn’t even that teenager. He’s a man; he’s a man who has a decent degree and a steady income that can afford his share of the rent. He’s the man that comes home to the smiling face of Betty Cooper and thanks the heavens that the wind was blowing in the right direction and the sun was shining just enough to give him the balls to suck it up and climb through her window - to kiss her.

 

He’s the man that lost his way, found someone to keep him on course, lost it _again_ , and still somehow managed to keep the one person who saw the potential beneath the years of weathering on his well-used exterior. And after a thorough polishing, perhaps a new paint job, and the right placement, Jughead finally feels like he’s somewhere he belongs.

 

He’s at his secondhand dinner table, sitting across from Betty Cooper, the ring he gave her sitting primly on the third finger of her left hand.

 

There’s been many a moment, during the subsequent years of their relationship that no longer included murdered sons, murdering fathers, snakes in jackets, and pixie stick drugs, where he’s pressed his face into the crook of her neck, legs hooked around hers beneath the blankets, and thanked her for saving him.

 

Betty always protests and tells him that it’s his own strength and pure determination, the ‘goodness in his heart that’s all his own’ that had gotten him to where he is. He’d been part of the reason the barrel of Clifford Blossom’s sins had been pried open, part of the reason the tension between two conflicting sides of a single town has settled before boiling over. He’s the _whole_ reason why his dad was still ticking off days of sobriety on his calendar and getting calls from Jellybean at the end of every month. He got his scholarship to college, and his first post-graduate job. Betty refuses to take credit where credit isn’t due.

 

Sometimes he lets it go. Other times he argues until she shuts him up with the mind-blanking power he swears her lips have, and he lets her do that too. Jughead is aware of the consequences that come with pinning all your damsel in distress hopes on one person, and he’s never making that mistake again. But he’d be a fool if he didn’t say that Betty is the reason he’s sitting where he is today, with the accomplishments that he has, because she’s championed him in a way that no one else has.

 

Because she’s a Cooper, and a Cooper gives up rarely, if ever.

 

Which is why when they’re sitting across from each other, eating what he’s already deemed to be a dinner with too much green and not enough grease, and Betty says, “I can’t wait to be Mrs Jones,” while gazing happily at her newly acquired jewellery, Jughead stops.

 

“Well, in principle, of course,” he jokes, stabbing at something that could be overcooked cucumber, or undercooked zucchini.

 

Betty wrinkles her brow, pausing the ascent of her fork to her mouth. “What do you mean?”

 

“You…” Jughead shifts in his seat, briefly wondering how many other significant others have shifted in just the same way beneath their partner’s intense stare on this exact chair before it found its way to their kitchen/dining area. “You’re still going to be Betty Cooper?” He hadn’t meant it to come out with such an unsure inflection, but the clink of her cutlery against their old good china leaves him second guessing his assumption.

 

“Why would I be? We’re getting married,” she states, like this closes the case on any ensuing discussion. And really, it should, but Jughead doesn’t always know when to keep his mouth shut.

 

“Yeah, but, you don’t have to change your name,” he tells her, laying a hand on her forearm and rubbing his thumb over the warm skin. She stares at it in confusion for a moment, lips still parted, like she can’t figure out why he’s doing something so comforting for someone that doesn’t need to be comforted. Jughead realises he isn’t sure either and draws the extremity back into his lap.

 

“I want to,” Betty says firmly, a conviction in her tone that he’s very familiar with. Right now, it’s making his stomach do unpleasant twists that he can’t blame on the vegetables.

 

“Oh.”

 

Betty draws her lower lip between her teeth, chewing on it thoughtfully. Jughead feels oddly like he’s about to be scolded. “Do you not want me to take your name?”

 

His first instinct is to say of course not, why would she think that, because diffusing the situation has always been preferable to exacerbating it, if past experience is anything to go by. But just before the appeasing words come out he realises two things simultaneously. First, that he doesn’t want to lie to her at this point in their lives.

 

And second, stupidly this might actually be the hill that he ends up dying on.

 

(A third, belated revelation is that he is, undoubtedly, an idiot.)

 

“No, actually. Not really,” he admits with a wince, taking a chance on the truth and hoping it doesn’t come back to sink its teeth into his posterior. Betty doesn’t say anything, only the corners of her lips turning down in something close to _hurt_ betrays her reaction, but she’s still sitting here and he suspects she’s waiting for his explanation. And it better be good.

 

“I’ve known you all my life, and you’re Betty Cooper. You’re the girl that convinced me to let you into the treehouse with chocolate chip cookies despite the ‘no girls’ rule, and got the school to start up the newspaper again even with the death of print journalism. You unearthed a killer with high schooler resources, and convinced a town full of prejudice to set aside their differences and come together with the sheer power of your will. It’s the name on your diploma, and everything you’ve had published.” Jughead ducks his head a little, swallowing the resurfacing of emotions that aren’t repressed but are still kept in a sturdy box. “You convinced me to not give up on myself, or my dad, or _us_. Even when I was doing everything in my power to shut this down and keep you away, you could see past all my insecure bullshit and get us to this place, where we’re happy. As we are. You don’t take anyone’s crap and you’re unapologetically you, which is one of the reasons I love you.”

 

When he looks up, there aren’t tears in Betty’s eyes - he’s not sure if he expected there would be, but from the way emotion is sitting heavily on his own chest right now maybe they just seem fitting for the atmosphere he’s created.

 

Instead, her eyes have narrowed, her cheeks have flushed, and there’s a tension in her shoulders that wasn’t there before. “So?” she says eventually, and whatever Jughead _had_ expected to come next, it wasn’t that.

 

“What do you mean, so?” he replies, reaching up to readjust his hat over his reddening ears.

 

“I mean, so what? The sentiment is nice, Jughead, but I don’t see what that has to do with me taking your name,” she huffs an unamused laugh.

 

He’s in deep and he has a feeling he’s going to keep digging. “It-” he begins, but truth be told he doesn’t really have much past that, other than a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, a sudden urge to take deep breaths, and maybe a leaden weight in the soles of his shoes. “It doesn’t seem right,” he finishes, squirming.

 

Betty gets up abruptly, taking their plates from the table and walking into the kitchen, placing them purposefully in the sink. Jughead watches her apprehensively, watching for signs that he’s really gone and done it this time, but Betty is unnervingly calm as she moves about the post-dinner chores.

 

Somehow that’s worse.

 

Jughead doesn’t know whether to get up and help or stay put in his seat like some sort of berated child. He feels told off, but the lack of actual yelling leaves him wondering whether they’re in a fight or not. When he was growing up, the presence of a dispute was never a secret, and while unpleasant Jughead finds himself thinking that he prefers knowing where he stood in a given situation.

 

He’s just about to get up and say something, or at least dry the dishes if she’d let him, when Betty comes back and sinks into her seat, her expression determined and full of purpose.

 

“To borrow from your earlier phrasing, I can see past your insecure bullshit,” she sighs, features softening as she turns in her chair to face him more fully.

 

“What do you mean?” he probes, because if someone could explain it to him he’d be eternally grateful.

 

“Jug, you said you like things as they are but they’re going to change regardless because,” she holds up her hand, gemstones catching the early evening light slanting in through their seventh story windows, “we’re getting married.”

 

“I know,” Jughead allows himself a wry smile, capturing her airborne hand and lacing his fingers through hers, relieved when she lets him. “I was there for that part.”

 

Betty smiles back briefly but it fades quickly to make way for her familiar quiet concern. “And everything you’ve just said, everything from our past, doesn’t get affected by the way we choose to live our future.”

 

There’s still a pleasant _swoop_ that glides through his stomach at the thought of their future, singular, forever intertwined. However, this conversation has tainted it, leaving him with the feeling that he’s reached the end of the drop on the rollercoaster and the track has melted away.

 

“It was very sweet of you to list the things that you love about me,” she murmurs, breaking her sentence to peck his lips briefly. “But all those accomplishments you just listed have nothing to do with the name I had when doing them. The articles I’ve had published will still be mine when I’m Betty Jones,” she reasons kindly, a hint of excitement hitching back into her voice. “I know it hasn’t always been the case, but the change doesn’t have to be a bad thing this time.”

 

Jughead is half listening to her dulcet tones, her words as a soothing balm. But the rest of him is focused on something else she said. About him attaching her name to her accomplishments.

 

All his life, people have said the name ‘Jones’ as if it’s a bad word. The melodramatic part of himself wants to categorise it as a curse word. Because, on occasion, he believes that being given the name at birth was something of a curse.

 

His mother certainly thought so; for all the relationships mended in the subsequent, more stable years of his youth, the one with his mother was still hard pressed. No matter the stages of grief passed, acceptance achieved, he still holds those young boy feelings of bitterness towards the woman that up and left him.

 

Because he was a Jones, no less. Hair too dark, jawline too sharp. He may have had lighter eyes than his father’s in colour, but they were still the deep set, narrowed ones that FP was also the owner of. Everything about him was too ‘Jones’ and it was too much for her to bear.

 

And then it was a name synonymous with Southside cover ups and Serpent Kings. He was enough to be included because he was son of a Jones. He wasn’t enough to be trusted because he was son of a Jones.

 

Sullying Betty’s name with anything of the kind felt like a betrayal, on his part. And he wouldn’t leave the bitter taste of it in her mouth like so many before. He wouldn’t be responsible for such a thing.

 

Jughead fumbles his was through his explanation, feeling ineloquent and confused and like he should return the advance he’d been given for his novel because he certainly couldn’t be a writer with these words.

 

“Jughead Jones,” she admonishes breathily, her deep green eyes going wide and soft, and Jughead feels a little bit invincible. The way she says his name - the way she always says it, he realises belatedly - makes him feel warm all over. She says it like she wants to say it for the rest of her life. “You are so much more than just a label. You are the man I _love_ , and want to be with. This name doesn’t mean anything in terms of the past it’s had. You fought _because_ of who you are, and _despite_ all the hindrances it gave you. All I see is the family we’re going to build together, that we’re going to become in the future,” she confesses, stroking her thumbs over the high points of his cheeks, tears gathering along her waterline.

 

Jughead swallows around the lump in his throat, leaning into her touch.

 

He knows she right. Even if he’s unsure, the sincerity in her tone in unmistakable, and that’s what soothes the flames licking at his insides for a little while.

 

In fact, he considers the subject forgotten for the night when she draws his lips towards hers, letting him tuck his hands beneath her thighs and lift her up, until later when they’re sleepy and content, curled around each other in his favourite way.

 

“Maybe I’ll take your name,” he muses on the edge of sleep, drawing trails up and down her back. When she doesn’t laugh he stops, wondering briefly if she’s fallen asleep.

 

“Actually, Juggie,” she pulls back to look at him. “Your thing earlier had me thinking.” She’s nibbling on her lip again, and Jughead reaches up with his thumb to briefly free the soft skin from her torture. “I realised that you saying you didn’t want me to take your name wasn’t anything against me.” Jughead opens his mouth to apologise for the thought even having to cross her mind, guilt poking at his gut, but she holds up a hand to stop him. “And I wondered why I was so ready to change my name in the first place, in this post-bra burning society,” she smiles, tapping her fingers against his chest.

 

“I think we had more concerns in common than I thought, yours just seemed more out of place because of _convention_ , and such.” She pauses and Jughead waits patiently, listening attentively to what she wants to say. “I have a lot of feelings attached to the name ‘Cooper’, too. It comes with a lot of expectations,” she says dryly, and Jughead’s chest rumbles with a laugh because they’re both aware of just how many. “The chance to get out from under its thumb seemed appealing for a second.”

 

“I understand that,” Jughead murmurs, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. There was a certain amount of guilt attached to his discomfort regarding his name. Guilt for feeling like he was betraying his father, guilt for knowing that he’d grown up often wishing his last name was Andrews, that blood brothers didn’t just have to be a phrase. But, in a way he’d come to accept the inevitability of ‘Jughead Jones’ being his moniker for the rest of his days. His name was both second hand and original, something that he was coming to realise held a substantial place in his life. He was who he was because of the mistakes his life has led him through, the new dependant on the old. His eternal cross to bear.

 

Only now with Betty reminding him of this, loving the way he was Jughead Jones in the same way he loved she was Betty Cooper - the good with the bad - did he make a bit more peace with his qualms.

 

But Betty seeing a way into the new by becoming a Jones? He could understand that, too.

 

“Telling you that you are more than your label made me realise that I am more than mine, and that maybe I should try listening to my own pearls of wisdom for once,” she rolls her eyes jokingly, but Jughead grins in the darkness, holding her tighter against him. He’s proud of her for recognising her concerns. He’s proud of _himself_ for doing the same thing.

 

He’s proud of _them_.

 

“What about Cooper-Jones?” he says after a few minutes of contented silence.

 

“I want us to have the same name,” she grumbles a little petulantly into his chest, and it spreads a warmth right to his fingertips.

 

“I meant for both of us,” he murmurs, closing his eyes and settling into the pillows. “Like a new start. A repurposing.”

 

“Yeah. I like that idea,” she sighs dreamily.

 

“Me too.”


End file.
